In Everything the Light Touches we meet many travellers: Shai, a young Indian woman who journeys to India’s northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of living that realign and renew her. Evelyn, an Edwardian student at Cambridge who, inspired by Goethe’s botanical writings, embarks on a journey seeking out the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas. Linnaeus, botanist and taxonomist, who famously declared God creates; Linnaeus organizes” and led an expedition to Lapland in 1732. And Goethe himself, who travelled through Italy in the 1780s, formulating his ideas for a revelatory text that called for a re-examination of our propensity to reduce plants – and the world – into immutable parts.
Drawing richly from scientific ideas, the novel plunges into a whirl of ever-expanding themes, and the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban life and the countryside, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and “song and stone.” At the heart of the book lies a tussle between different ways of seeing – those that fix and categorize, and those that free and unify.
Everything the Light Touches brings together, with startling and playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from each other in time and place. Yet all is resonance, we discover; all is connection.
In the year 1952, Kalu escaped Banjhan Kalan in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur for Bedford in the British Midlands, hoping to find a life of dignity that he had beIn the year 1952, Kalu escaped Banjhan Kalan in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur for Bedford in the British Midlands, hoping to find a life of dignity that he had been denied because of his caste. He was in his late teens and had grown up believing in Sikhism’s tenet of equality preached by Guru Nanak and Ravidas, a principle the villagers never sincerely practised. They had maimed his father, accusing him of stealing a zamindar’s ox; they had thrown father and son out of a Quit India rally; they had mercilessly thrashed young Kalu himself for daring to enter a temple. He had never been allowed to forget—even by his schoolmates—that he was a Chamar, destined to skin dead cattle like his ancestors.
Suket, Raghu and Shams are no strangers to taking on powerful political interests. They’ve never shied away from speaking their minds, with words or on the streets. And they’re used to a few bones being broken every now and then for it.
But something feels wrong about the state of affairs in the country now which they can’t quite put their finger on. Increasingly hard living conditions are met with breathless praise for the great work of development by the government. A politics of identity—of the religious kind—has all but replaced the pursuit of social justice. And people’s sentiments are so easily hurt that just about any divergent word you speak may bring a mob to your door. What has gone so wrong? Why does it feel like the entire nation has been lobotomized?
There are days when the three friends think they are close to an answer. But they have no idea how little they know.
In any case, their time’s up. They’re going to find out tonight. The National Commission for Hurt Sentiments is bringing them in for a ‘friendly interaction’.
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"A furore erupts across India when explosives are found outside Kuberia, the house of Asia’s richest man, Kuber. Assistant Police Inspector Yatin Sathe, the controversial head of CIU of the Mumbai Police, who handles all high-profile cases, becomes the chief investigation officer of this case as well. Then the truth comes to light that Yatin Sathe had planted the explosive-laden Scorpio outside Kuberia and is now the investigating officer of that very same case.
What made Sathe plant the explosives? What role did the state government have in it? Who will emerge victorious in this tussle of Centre vs state politics? Who will turn out to be the dirtiest player and the real facilitator of all the dirty games? Who will be the biggest ‘criminal in uniform’?"
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"‘No matter which story I say is true, you will still believe only the version that you choose to.’
A young journalist in Kerala who wakes up to find he’s become Gabriel García Márquez…
A one-time zookeeper in search of a lost tiger cub in a war-torn Arab city…
A man in a Maharashtra village who must keep thieving because of his caste…
Featuring JCB Prize-winning author Benyamin’s finest short fiction, Márquez, EMS, Gulam and Others brings together people, places, lives and times. Translated brilliantly by Swarup B.R., these stories unravel, with deep sensitivity, the human condition across fault lines of class, caste, colour and country, of illusion and reality. They make you ponder about the world we live in, the people who inhabit it, the borders separating us – and the truths and lies we tell ourselves and others."
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"Sneha Talwar is an idealistic young reporter on an assignment to profile Natasha Babani, environmental activist and multi-talented mommy-influencer, who has spent the last year cleaning up a polluted lake.
But before she can get started, Natasha's body is found floating in that very lake. As Sneha swiftly changes gear and begins to dig around for information on Natasha, she unearths a whole 'mommy universe' that thrives on its own rules, rivalries and intrigues.
Moms in the Wild is a dark, funny and razor-sharp story about the perilous world of social media, replete with murderous secrets, complicated lies and how far people will go to keep them."
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